The Execution Detail of Andrew Oikonny
by W.Kiessel
Summary: A speech delivered to the Veterans Benefit Ball of the 402nd Military Police Battalion, given by Captain Leonard Scanlon, retired.
1. Chapter 1

Look at the picture. See the crusted scab of Solar hanging in the molten nickel sky of Venom. See the scorched hills of the ruined olive groves. See the corduroy road of skeletons leading up to our staked out precipice. See the two pigs and the monitor lizard in their tiger striped battle garb. See! The ape on his knees before them. Oh friends friends brothers and friends half of you I had hoped to never see again. Hoped against hope I did. Time however is a bitch and has brought me back to this wonderful conclave of morons and sinners and killers.

When this happened we small band of brothers were ordered to silence: never more shall we converse the foul deeds of this useless day. And for twenty years have I kept that order: twenty years of night sweats! Twenty years of shaking in shame when asked by my wife what did I do on Venom? Twenty years of imposed tyranny from an officer I never saw in my life! Can you believe that? And what's worse is that I kept that oath. Had Fox McCloud never opened his mouth on the Phil Hawks show I would have followed Wilks and Sambor and taken this story to the grave.

Of course there was the temptation. Upon flying through the great beyond I would have greeted the great eternal gate and shoved that son of a bitch open with both hands. I would have strolled into the great yawning anteroom of whatever mead hall of whatever cosmic thunderer awaits me. I would have given the mighty Goddess of war the double guns and barked at the God of Art and Beauty to kiss my big piggy thighs. And Wilks, Sambor, and I would have thought back to this story and laughed and laughed and laughed. The story would be my relic and the total silence around it my reliquary.

But oh friends that Fox Moloch-cloud...! Bright eyed hero-whore to our planets! Savior of us all! He decided he wanted to talk about his deeds. He needed, almost pathologically- sexually!- yearned, for the warmth of limelight and he opened his trap. Behold the vulpine! Behold his clenching of his combat knife Gram in his teeth! Behold him plunging into the slimy darkness of Hell Bunker 6 with a song on the tip of his tongue and a blaster in his hand! Behold him cornering Andrew Oikonny in the control room and sending a single hyper-heated bolt of purifying energy through him. Behold his ruptured heart gone supernova and showering the technological tenticles of his now deceased Andross with the last ichor of hate! Hallelujah and amen amen and thricemore amen the nemesis is defeated. The crowd then all applauded and everyone got a new hovercar: o! O! O blessed be Fox McCloud!

I saw him put on that interview. I saw Hawks stare and smile and nod at the false savior. I looked down at my hand and saw the beer can in it now fifty million miles away on the great plain of my recliner armrest. My wife Helen drying and redrying the same spot on the popcorn bowl with an embroidered towel. It has a little cat on it with some flowers- Macbethian Lillies. I cried. A great howl came from within me. I raged and stormed and leapt! I flew across the room and grabbed hold of that infernal box and cast it out the window! The neighborhood heard it! This great defenestration of Beecher avenue! A clarion call to all us sleepers now awakened!

Not really. I just said something rude to the TV and was pissy the rest of the day. I like the other version of the story better.

To you my comrades, my trench lovers, my tank riders- to you I am now in debt. My fellow knights. Gathered veterans of the Four-Oh-Second. I bring to you all today the story of of Andrew Oikonny. I fear you will consider this all grand lies and nonsense. I can only present this in defense: I was there. I stand with my soul naked to you o my fellow destroyed hearts and testify that I was present and a witness. May my soul, my commission as a Cornerian officer, and my legacy be forever tainted if none of this is true.

We caught Andrew Oikonny. We gave him a drumhead court martial. We sentenced him to death. It took three minutes. He fell to his knees and wept and gibbered as we laughed. We then executed him. We then disposed of him. Blessings to all bipedal animals, all creatures great and small.

And in the end it didn't matter. I will tell you about this great nothingness now. The castle on the hill is cardboard and the sky is paper and celophane and every night every god forsaken night I wake up crying for no reason and my wife holds me as I sob and god damn you to hell, Fox McCloud.


	2. Chapter 2

II

And so there we were, Wilks, Sambor, and I. Two porcine and dragons all fruit of a now battered and blasted Cornerian life tree. We'd fought across the wastes of Fortuna and Fichina and Katina and Macbeth. Slogged through the malarial yellow shorelines and estuaries of Zoness. And it had all been against these countless nobodies. That's what the war was my friend. Nobodies fighting nobodies.

Of course all remember Colonel Hoban- don't you all remember him? He was the one they sent the original data-blast to. "STAR WOLF TEAM SPOTTED OVER CORNERIA CITY." it read. "KNOWN FOOTAGE STRAFING RUNS RESIDENTIAL SECTORS." And they sent out the four second video to all of us. Grainy as hell. I've seen fifteen-credit robberies from liquor stores recorded with higher definition. But so it was and so we read and saw the incriminating evidence and we took it into our hearts. Of course we couldn't do a gods-be-damned thing about it until we finally cornered the bastards.

And anyway so there we were the last surviving officers of Axe Company, Four-Oh-Second Military Police. And there was this metal door in crappy concrete bunker in the side of this hell. In his interview McCloud said he had to use a linear cutter-a laser powered by its own miniature sun!- to carve into a monolithic blast door. Another lie- it was a ten-gauge pop steel thing thrown up in the planetary defense system's dying days.

Of course it had to go. Colonel Lazenby had another soft ember tobac' stick dangling out between his tusks and pointed at the three of us.

"Wilks, Leonard, Sambor," he said. "Any of you got a shotgun?"

"Of course I do," Sambor said through his mouth of broken teeth. He'd been pitched out of our scout car on Macbeth-and flew to safety to land on his face while Colonel Hoban had been blown to chunks.

"And it's got a mag load in there?" Asked Lazenby.

"Of course," said Sambor.

"Then get in there," said Lazenby.

So we shrugged and sighed and spat on the ground and shuffled over to the door. This rusted red gateway to death, this great mighty approach to glory.

"Watch your ass," Wilks said as Sambor chambered the round.

And we leaned our weights against the side of the hill and coughed and Sambor grunted and held the gun at forty-five and forty-five and shouted something and with a terrific clap blew the lock off. And it swung open and there was a stairway leading to a second doorway, just like our informant said.

Of course Andrew was sold out for less than ten credits. Of course we didn't even have to hogtie the parakeet or threaten to throw him out of a drop ship or even into some hole in the ground. Lord Andrew guardian of Venom Supreme Master of Lylat and Heir Apparent to the Universe was sold out for four ration packs, a change of socks, and a half-empty pack of toilet paper.

And Wilks said something like "Oh hell," and we trudged down that event horizon into the unknown. And Sambor grunted because of his chapped hamburger feet and I was still feeling the knot in my back that still hasn't gone away since Katina. And at the foot of the door was some dead wolf.

Of course it wasn't THE Wolf. Of course not. There was a five second pang of maybe this was it and we'd gotten two demons on this hunting trip. Of course it would have been disappointing to have come all this way and then seen THE Wolf O'Donnell dead at the bottom of a flgiht of stairs with a laser cauterized hole in his head. Of course we found out later in the week that he had been caught trying to bail out the window of a dirty movie theater in Andrograd and of course he's now in a protected prison planet where he howls and wails through the night. Of course we left this idiot where he was and I don't know if anyone ever came to bury him.

And we stacked up near the door and Sambor worked his slide and took position and blew open the second door. There were no booby traps and there wasn't even any real horror show that greeted us. Instead was a desk and a light bulb and one or two radio-TVs and Andrew with his hands all up and he had been crying.

Of course Sambor charged in and butt-stroked him across the face and of course Wilks and I laughed uproariously at what sounded like a coconut hitting the grocery store floor. Of course Andrew didn't even put up a fight. He crumpled like a bag of manure and I can't remember if Wilks or I radioed back to the topside that we were coming back up.

And there wasn't any epic laser duel. And there wasn't any tied up young Aquasian beauty with her dress ripped so far down. And there wasn't any Andross staring through the vidcommunicators clawing at his face in disbelief. And there weren't any triumphant choirs of angels heralding our arrival as we thump-thump-thumped Andrew's weeping and crying head back up those stairs.


End file.
